COLLECTIONS

Historical Witness

The Museum’s
signature Historical Witness Project began as a series of recorded
conversations with collectors who have donated items to the Wende in order to capture
the history of objects. It is integrated
into The Museum’s ongoing exhibition Facing
the Wall: Living With the Berlin Wall, which traces the personal stories of four
individuals intimately associated with The Museum: a West Berlin wall painter, Thierry
Noir, (view The Wall Project), an East German border guard, Peter Bochmann, (view Peter Bochmann Collection), a day visitor from the West, Alwin Nachtweh, and a former
East German Stasi officer, Hagen Koch. Exploring the complex, interconnected, and often contradictory nature of
history seen through the lenses of these four individuals living at the Wall,
The Wende’s exhibition and Historical Witness Project recreate the place where
the realities of political ideology and personal experience came face to face (view Current Exhibitions).

With support from Fiona Chalom and Joel Aronowitz, the Wende Museum's Historical Witness Project has
recently expanded to include the reflections of scholars, artists, filmmakers
and average citizens of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, as well as the testimonies of Albanian political prisoners and victims
of persecution collected by the Albanian Human Rights Project (see below). Their personal experiences shed light on
artifacts in the collection as well as issues and topics that are relevant to
the Museum’s mission. Over the next
several years, the Museum plans to significantly increase the number and
diversity of these recordings, make them available online and incorporate them
into programs and exhibitions.

The Wende
Museum serves as research repository for the historical witness videos
collected by the Albanian Human Rights Project, a U.S.-based non-profit organization
dedicated to collecting, filming, and preserving the testimonies of Albanians
who were politically imprisoned or interned from 1944-1991 during Albania’s
communist regime. These unique primary sources, more than 70 in number and still
growing, document a range of individuals’ experiences of political repression.
The Wende is working with the AHRP to translate and make accessible to English
speakers this vital resource for scholars, students, and the general public.

"I believe that this
series congealed over time while I was in prison from 1978 to 1986. They had
already become images in my mind at that period. I had only to put them on paper…When I
completed the series I felt liberated. I breathed with relief just as I did the
day I was released from the SPAC prison camp. It
is a series on the violence of investigation, and the violence of life in
prison, for Communism was a system based on crime."

-Maks
Velo

The Wende Museum provides access to digital materials for purposes of education and research. It is the sole responsibility of the user to obtain any legal permission necessary for reuse. Click here for more information.